


Replica

by TabooMonster123



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, basically a summary of events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 01:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14727587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TabooMonster123/pseuds/TabooMonster123
Summary: In the beginning, you are Luke Fon Fabre. This is what you know.





	Replica

**Author's Note:**

> I found this in my gdocs and don't really remember writing it, so I have no idea if it's actually finished according to my original intentions for it. I skimmed through it and decided it was finished enough to get posted, however, please keep in mind that I haven't really edited it as far as I can remember. That said, I hope you like it!

In the beginning, you are Luke Fon Fabre. This is what you know: that seven years ago, you were kidnapped by the rival Malkuth Empire and lost all of your memories, leaving you with horrible migraines and a voice in your head that you can’t quite hear; that since then, you have been confined to your father’s mansion, your only activities being to eat, sleep, and train with Master Van; that you will only be released from your cage when you turn twenty, the age of majority in your kingdom of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear. You are engaged to your cousin, crown princess Natalia, and you are not allowed to be friends with the servants (though you are anyway).

You hate your life. You’re spoiled, rich, arrogant, but you’re also lonely, ignorant, and untrusted or deemed irresponsible by everyone except Master Van, who teaches you swordfighting. Not even Guy, who is your only close friend, treats you with as much personal autonomy as Master Van. And you’ve just learned that he’s leaving you to go look for some Fon Master kid named Ion from the Order of Lorelei. Who cares about some lost kid, even if he is good at fonic artes?

And then, not ten minutes into your last training session before he leaves, some cold bitch named Tear shows up, tries to kill him, and ends up accidentally teleporting you to the middle of nowhere in the Malkuth Empire.

Tear is, understandably, confused and kind of pissed off that you foiled her assassination attempt. Which is a weird thing to attempt in the first place, as both she and Master Van are part of the Order of Lorelei themselves. However, she bears you no ill will, and agrees to help you find your way back home. It’s her fault, after all; how were you supposed to know that parrying her blow would create a hyperresonance with her Seventh Fonon? And what the hell are those things, anyway??

From there, everything gets more complicated. You meet Colonel Jade Curtiss, also known as Jade the Necromancer, and add him to your party, along with that Fon Master Ion kid (who isn’t missing after all, just purposely avoiding the Order of Lorelei) and his bodyguard, Anise, who’s twelve but somehow still better at everything than anyone except Jade. Ion has a letter regarding a permanent peace treaty between Malkuth and Kimlasca to deliver to the latter on the former’s behalf, and you didn’t even know there had been wars between the two nations, much less that there was another one brewing. Except the Six God-Generals from the Order of Lorelei, apparently acting directly under Master Van’s orders, are trying to kill you and actually kidnap Ion, because that’ll probably lead to war between the two nations and they want that because? You’re not sure why. Jade probably knows, and Tear probably suspects, but they’re not talking. Typical.

(Master Van would tell you. You don’t believe this shit about Van being the one to order Ion’s kidnapping. Master Van wouldn’t do that; he’d been convinced that Ion had been taken or was missing, and was very serious about going to find him. You’re sure this is all some huge misunderstanding.)

But then Guy shows up, apparently sent to go find you, and he escorts you back to the border, where Master Van is waiting to bring you home! You can’t wait to get out of this mess and sleep in a proper bed. And Tear has agreed to put aside her differences with Van, too, in order to deliver Ion’s letter safely to Kimlasca’s Emperor.

Master Van meets you at Chesedonia, a trade city, and you learn that Tear is apparently his sister, and holy shit does that family need counseling, but then you’re on a boat back home to Baticul and your parents, and when you finally arrive it seems like everyone’s going their separate ways.

Except apparently not, because Van’s been arrested for conspiracy to kidnap a Fon Master, and the only way to clear his reputation is to have him escort you as an ambassador of aid to the mining city Akzeriuth, which is being plagued by a miasma that makes people terminally sick. You really don’t want to go, but it’s the only way Van won’t get put on trial through the Order, and with the Six God-Generals still a threat this is really the best way for the truth to come out. (Because logic and reasons.)

So you go to meet with Master Van and make a plan. And at this meeting, he tells you something wonderful.

“I can make you a hero,” he says. “With your Seventh Fonon, we can make a hyperresonance and completely destroy the miasma. I can calm you enough to make it work; you just need to trust me. You do trust me, don’t you, Luke?”

And you do. You trust him more than anyone in the world. So you tell him so, excited just to be going on an adventure with this man who treats you like an equal, who doesn’t keep secrets from you and speaks his mind, even when it’s to scold your careless indifference towards other people. Even Guy has his secrets, but there are none between you and Master Van.

This is gonna be great.

“Oh, and Luke?”

“Yes?”

“Not a word of this to anybody. They’ve got enough to worry about with the peace efforts and the God-Generals, so this plan stays between us, understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good boy.”

(At the top of the stairs, Princess Natalia picks herself up and walks silently away. This, she thinks, is my ticket to Akzeriuth. Father can take his rules and eat them.)

On the day you’re meant to leave, everything happens at once: the God-Generals show up outside the entrance to the city, Tear, Jade, Anise, Guy, and Ion all decide to join the aid mission, Van decides to leave by boat as a decoy (because he’s known to be travelling with the ambassador of aid to Akzeriuth, maybe that’ll throw off their trail), except then Ion gets kidnapped for real this time, and Guy has to sneak you out of the city, and Natalia shows up and blackmails you into letting her come with you, which nobody is particularly pleased about.

And then the moment you leave the city, you see him.

A God-General, Asch the Bloody, with two other God-Generals, one of whom has Ion.

But Asch… Asch looks exactly like you.

Jade, of course, trades insults with him over your head after the other two get away. A whole bunch of stuff about fomicry and replicas get thrown around like knives, but eventually Asch disappears and you’re left wondering what the fuck just happened.

You get Ion back relatively quickly, cornering the three God-Generals in the Zeo Ruins and knocking off two of them while Asch stands there and watches. In the end, he lets Ion go, but not without a vague warning about Akzeriuth and Tear’s brother.

Ion tells, you, en route to Akzeriuth, that they were trying to get him to release the seal on the Sephiroth located there. You’re not sure what the Sephiroth is, but then, you’re not sure about a lot of things, and neither Jade nor anyone else is willing to elaborate.

Akzeriuth is worse off than you were lead to believe. The others want to start evacuating immediately, but you know you have to find Master Van in order to destroy the miasma and become a hero, so you try to lead them down into the mines. Tear gets called away on Order business, and the others won’t leave those trapped in the main part of the mine, so you and Ion head down alone to where Master Van is waiting.

You find him facing a door made of colored glass, exactly like the one you found Ion in front of at the Zeo Ruins.

“Undo the Seal, Ion,” he says. “There’s no time to waste.”

“I don’t think unlocking the sephiroth will help, Master General Grants,” Ion says.

“Trust me,” you say. “Master Van knows what he’s doing. Open the door, Ion.”

Ion releases the Seal. Master Van takes you down, deep into the earth, into a cavern made entirely out of fonic artes (or that’s what it looks like, anyway). He stands you in front of the spire at the end of the walkway and says, “Now, concentrate!”

No! Yells the voice in your head. Don’t! You’ll destroy us all!

You ignore it. What does it know, anyway, you’re trying to save Akzeriuth!

Don’t do it! Don’t let him in!

“Let me in,” Master Van says.

You let him in.

***  
Akzeriuth is destroyed. Thousands are dead. You are in shock.

Somehow, you find a working ship and take it across this underground sea of miasma and mud to the City of Lorelei. The others blame you for everything. You don’t know what happened. They keep saying, it’s your fault. You destroyed the Sephiroth. You trusted him.

You let him in.

It’s not true, it can’t be true. But not even Ion believes you.

At the City, Asch is waiting for you.

In front of everyone, he confronts you: he tells you that Van and Tear were born here, in the Qliphoth, the centre of the world. He says that Van tricked you into destroying one of the seven Sephiroth, the Fonic Trees holding the Outer World up from the inner core, that Van wants to destroy the Outer World and bring it back down to the Qliphoth, like it used to be millenia ago.

He tells you about how, seven years ago, he was kidnapped by the villain Master General Van Grants, taken from his home in Kimlasca, from his family, Duke Fon Fabre and his wife.

He tells you about the replica factory, where Van took him and copied his very being, and left the copy for Kimlasca to find.

He tells you the truth. And for it, you try to fight him.

You lose spectacularly, and when you wake up, it is to find yourself unable to wake your own body and stuck inside of Asch’s, with everyone but Tear leaving with Asch to find Van: Jade and Ion to stop the continued destruction of the Sephiroth Trees, Anise because you are no longer trustworthy, and Natalia because this is the man she was betrothed to, not that fake of a replica. Even Guy leaves with him to go back to the Outer World.

In the end, you know this: you are no one. You are nothing. And you are completely and utterly alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you can, please leave a comment, they really make my day.


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